Letters

April 28 through May 2 is Jury Appreciation Week. The Fourth Judicial District Court would like to extend its gratitude to all the citizens of San Miguel, Mora and Guadalupe Counties who serve on jury duty.
Chief Judge Abigail Aragon, Judge Matthew Sandoval and Judge Gerald E. Baca would like to update the public on the improvements made by the Fourth Judicial District Court to jury service.
Effective May 1, a toll free jury number (1-844-454-2955) will be provided to jurors who are out of the 505 calling area so that jurors do not incur long distance phone costs.

If a Community Rights Ordinance is unconstitutional, then the word constitutional has no meaning. A community rights ordinance is written to return power to communities to protect themselves from greedy corporations.

The recent sinking of a Korean ferry and the loss of hundreds of vacationing high school students is a tragedy hard to comprehend, for the students and their families. May I humbly suggest that the people of Las Vegas take a minute at 6 p.m. this evening to pray or send good wishes and comfort to the families in Ansan, Gyeonggi, South Korea, in hopes that they might feel the love from this good-hearted town.

It couldn’t hurt, and maybe the “group effort” at one moment, might help the message get there.

This letter is written in response to the letter by John T. Romero which appeared in the Optic on March 28, 2014. The letter is full of unsubstantiated claims and assertions. The writer ­— in one fell swoop of the pen — paints a picture of the county of Mora being subjected to a cost “well over $1 million.”

An important event took place last month in Geneva, Switzerland, but few in the United States, apart from human rights advocates, knew anything about it.

The U.S. ratified the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights about 20 years ago. In effect, this treaty is an international Bill of Rights. In ratifying the treaty, the U.S. agreed to abide by its provisions and to report at regular intervals to the UN Human Rights Committee, composed of experts in human rights law, to give an accounting of our progress in meeting the standards of the treaty.

On Tuesday, April 8, the San Miguel County Commission held its monthly meeting. The room was packed. The main item on the agenda was the vote to be taken regarding a two-year extension of the fracking moratorium now in place, the same two-year extension that had just been recommended by the Planning and Zoning Commission.